


you’re the one who builds my paradise

by Pixeled



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Love, M/M, Mistakes, Redemption, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28276020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixeled/pseuds/Pixeled
Summary: But he never saw himself with anyone. When he went out, looked into a glass of Scotch neat as if the clear umber liquid was better than the cruelty and pettiness of the gods, and he was approached by women, no matter what they looked like he had no interest. There wasn’t anything in it for him. He was far too honest, and small talk was for people who didn’t care that the clock was always ticking. But was he doing things any better?He thought, perhaps, work was all he needed.Until he met Vincent.
Relationships: Vincent Valentine/Veld
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	you’re the one who builds my paradise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Valentined](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valentined/gifts), [takenbynumbers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takenbynumbers/gifts).



Vincent didn’t really drink, so it was surprising how much he drank tonight.

Veld should have said something. He felt like that often around Vincent, but when he tried to search for what the words were, tried to pluck them down and arrange them, they eluded him. It was his face. The way his eyes were big and red and made his heart hurt, the way he said he didn’t really smile much when he’d first met him, but how often he gave him a little one now and then. No teeth, but it was _genuine_ and _because of him_ and it distracted Veld so much that he thought of it sometimes when he was doing menial tasks, shaken out of it by one of the others asking him a question, seeking guidance. Guidance he was more than happy to give because he knew things by now, or so he thought.

There was a sort of certainty to his life. Much of it was set in stone, and that didn’t bother him. Who would be upset with being good at being the Director of an entire Department integral to a Corporation that was settling into itself rapidly, establishing its worth in the world? And he wasn’t even thirty. It was something he was told often. “And you’re not even thirty”.

It was hard to make it to thirty where he came from. Even harder to say “things are set in stone”. The future was always uncertain. He lived moment to moment. That’s just how it had to be. His mother was dead. His father, who knows and who cares. His grandmother, who made it to sixty, had no idea who he was by the end and he took care of her for years every day until she died, but it was the least he could do being that she raised him while his mother worked in the mines toiling endlessly for coal to make their lives somewhat livable. It was like taking care of a baby. But even babies knew your face. They knew when you were kind, when you were cruel. They knew the difference even though they were helpless. They laughed, they cried. They tracked your finger, your eyes, knowing somehow you were responsible for them.

But she didn’t.

He gave her sponge baths. He fed her spoonfuls of grits. He tucked her into bed with the most comfortable blankets in the little ramshackle Corel town house while, when he finally laid in his squeaky cot, he pulled a thin scratchy brown blanket over himself and didn’t complain even in the winter because he had a job to do, even though the vacant lifelessness in his grandmother’s eyes bothered him when he took the barest of moments to think about it. It was because she had been so full of life. She made him try coffee when he was four and when he liked it she gave him espresso, she cursed with the effortlessness and automatic reaction of the gravity of water pouring out of a faucet. Not that they had that. They had a pump in the town square.

“Fuck me! Gonna get forearms and biceps the size of Ifrit’s dick soon pumpin’ that shite, Veld!”

She was the only one who called him Veld. She said “Verdot” was stupid. That it didn’t suit him. She said “you’re a whole fuckin’ cellar of expensive wine in some rich fuck’s basement, not some fuckin’ unripe grape _meant_ for wine. Veld, now that’s a _field_. Vast, full of _possibility_. _That_ ’s yer fuckin’ name from now on.”

And it was.

And he was who he was because of her.

Midgar was his “full of possibilities”. So far, so good. And honestly, it was all fine and good and effortless like the faucet he had in his apartment below the plate instead of the pump he was accustomed to.

Things were easy.

Until he met Vincent.

It was more than his face, of course. Before he met Vincent he was sure of the words he wanted to say. He was sure about a lot of things.

Veld was shorter than Vincent, sure, and maybe that should have made a difference in how much liquor he could handle versus his partner, but it was clear they were built very differently. They were just different from the hair on the top of their heads to their toes. It was hard to remember sometimes, though, that Vincent was built differently, honestly.

Vincent was a force unlike any other. He had a raw savagery, taken from some sort of well he could tap into to make him have the sort of strength a man twice his size should have given the right circumstances. It was at odds with this delicate looking thing laying on his couch, all long limbs.

Veld brought him back to his apartment, but it wasn’t to do what they’d been doing in secret for months. It was different this time.

He sighed, long and loud. He didn’t even feel drunk anymore.

He had a job to do.

“Vince, are ya with me?”

“Why did you bring me here? What are we doing, Veld?”

“Not sure what ya mean, Vince,” Veld said. But he knew.

He knew exactly what he meant.

Veld hadn’t been with anyone before Vincent, and Vincent said the same, though Veld couldn’t understand how. Okay, he understood how. Vincent was shy. Far too shy. Didn’t know how to be himself, when Veld didn’t know how to be anything other than himself. Vincent was lost where Veld was found. Or so he thought.

His grandmother told him once she hoped he could escape the town, find himself a good honest _fertile_ woman and have lots of babies.

He wanted a daughter. Just one. And he wanted her to be like his grandmother: self-sufficient, speaking her mind in a world full of women who thought they had no right to, _full of possibilities._ Most of all, he wanted her to be better than him.

But he never saw himself with anyone. When he went out, looked into a glass of Scotch neat as if the clear umber liquid was better than the cruelty and pettiness of the gods, and he was approached by women, no matter what they looked like he had no interest. There wasn’t anything in it for him. He was far too honest, and small talk was for people who didn’t care that the clock was always ticking. But was he doing things any better?

He thought, perhaps, work was all he needed.

Until he met Vincent.

Passionate kisses, meaningful looks, language that didn’t need to be spoken? Recognition of something deeper than just politeness? That was really something, because he wasn’t polite, and even though on the surface Vincent was polite and shy and did whatever you told him to do, he was so much more. And maybe he should have said so.

But he didn’t.

The words eluded him.

Maybe he just _wanted_ to believe they eluded him. He could have said what Vincent meant to him. They spent so much time together, got to know each other more intimately than perhaps most people did or could, and glances and body language between them said more than most things, but they didn’t say _enough_.

Maybe he was a field, but Vincent was his _paradise_. And that was the problem, because all he wanted was to love him, smell him, taste him, be surrounded in him all the time no matter what, but he couldn’t admit it and was too ashamed, pretending that he had no words to give him.

Many years later, when Vincent was dead, and he was married and had a baby girl, watching her grow into her own person, the years passed went too quick and too slow all at once.

Now Felicia was _Elfé_ and she was everything he wanted in a daughter even when she left him to follow her dreams. They weren’t his dreams. That was ok. She was grown and strong and blew from his field like a dandelion seed that took root in a different field, a field where she could be better than he ever could be, stronger. She laughed loud and loved hard and fought like the world depended on her. Maybe it did.

He was just a coward.

Even when he found Vincent in the coffin that he’d let himself be sealed in and he tried to save him from rotting away without actually being allowed to rot, the vacancy in his eyes hurt, but Veld deserved it. So even though Vincent helped him for what felt like the blink of an eye, he still crept back into that coffin, murmuring about sins.

He wanted to ask him about his own sins but it didn’t seem right, because those sins sealed him in that coffin, and if he wanted to stay there, what right did he have to ask him to leave? He said he’d come back for him, but he realized he didn’t deserve to ever see him again, given what he’d done. He realized that Vincent had never been given choices, and even if he _did_ have _some_ , Veld had definitely stripped them all away as easy as how he got to breathe and Vincent couldn’t anymore.

Was it all a cruel dream?

No, he’d done what he’d done. He made the choices he made. He needed to be awake to see it.

Tseng looked at him with cruel eyes when he used to look at him with such reverence, but Veld knew he deserved it. He deserved way more than that _look_. He’d chosen Felicia over him, and while Felicia was his everything, Tseng should have been important too. He just _abandoned_ him, forced him to deal with most of the chaos that almost destroyed the world, only sweeping in to look like a hero when Tseng couldn’t do what he always did, which was what he was _told_ to do. He’d left him without choices, too, just like Vincent.

But he did _more_ than abandon Vincent.

He should have learned his lesson, but he couldn’t deal with people finding him important anymore. Useful? Sure. Important? No. He was nobody.

Many years later, he was an old man sitting with his regrets, unable to do anything about all the mistakes he’d made. He’d made the bed he laid on.

Somehow he still slept just fine.

He clenched his prosthetic fist that reminded him of how he’d destroyed the man he should have just let himself love, should have made the effort to give him his words that so often “eluded” him. On top of that, the prosthetic used to elicit the screams of his wife he’d never loved echoing in his mind, reminding him of all the people he killed with his speechlessness. He said a lot of things for someone who said nothing at all. But now he wore a single black leather glove and long sleeves so he didn’t have to think about all of it.

He wanted to believe it was all a nightmare.

But the worst thing about it was that he knew, morning to night, and even in his dreams, that he had gotten to live, and now he was older than his grandmother and aware of all his bullshit. His field was a desert. Perhaps it always was.

He sat in an office waiting for the Commissioner of Edge to come talk to him about his new role in the dawn of a new age without the love of his life, knowing he might still be in that coffin trapped with his thoughts and nothing else. The thought hurt.

Then there was a rap at the door.

“I’ve brought someone,” The Commissioner said, cracking the door open, and when it opened all the way, his eyes widened.

That little smile. No teeth. But it was _for him._


End file.
